DIGITAL FRONTIERS: "Apocalypto" (2005, Dir: Mel Gibson)

Hey sorry the episode is late, we recorded like three episodes this week and Matt didn't have time to edit. Anyway while we were scrambing to figure out something to watch for weird scheduling reasons, we discovered that Apocalypto was shot on digital and boy oh boy were we lucky for that fact because this is a weird one/wild digital artifact. Topics include: Gibson's unrelenting thrist for a certain kind on screen violence, the weird push and pull between woke method and conservative values in the movie, and the uses of digital video in creating a kind of on screen murkiness as a central unifying aesthetic.  An artcicle about the movie's busted concept of Mayan history can be read here. Our friend Ryder recommends "Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest" for a pointed corrective on the kind of anthropological thinking that Gibson promotes here: we don't tak about it much because we're a film scolar and a local dummy but Ryder went to fancy history school.  Matt recommends a book that won't be out for a few months. Yeah I don't get it either. Corbin recommends a video game, available on your local video game console of choice. Thursday's episode is about INLAND EMPIRE. Watch it here.